Watch Humpty At the Wall

Have you ever sat on a wall? Paused as you were over the hump? Located one nearby from which you could view your conquest, without being utterly noisy and self-possessed by it. Have you ever sat there and saw the next stage of your journey and grimaced with fear and the pain of a thorn bush in your backside you hadn't noticed when first sitting down?

Even on top of the wall, the troubles don't end. I am not sure why most of the world deludes itself into thinking striving to get over the walls in their way will make life taste like whatever your most favorite food happens to be. Mine as you know, is 100% pure crunchy peanut butter. British peanut butter is just as good any any, by the way.

I got turned about trying to find the first place I have a lead on, in terms of flat/room-hunting but now I have two hours to wander about before I am good to show up at the door. All out of worry, for the very reason of getting lost. And yet, here I am drumming up worries about whether I will be likeable enough, whether I can trust the person I will rent from, and most of all, how in the flip do I pay for this when all I have is cash and handing out even a hundred pound deposit does not keep me comfortable in the guise that said rent will be honoured and I will be able to move in.

But then again, that is me seeing beyond the moat of societies happiness to have just hit the top of the wall before they do see the mudslide beneath and other walls which might build up in place.

I didn't get that place in the end. I asked for a couple days to think and it went to some nurse instead. The landlord was too quiet though, and something, something about the place twigged me wrong. Maybe it was the shabbiness. Maybe it was the single bathroom in the whole place. Maybe I was not meant to be in such a central location. Either way, my worries haven't ended. I am still up in the air about a potential place. I've seen about five now. Two were in the estate areas which Julie, the lady I am temporarily staying with, warned me off of and for a good reason, I see now.

These estates are a bit like mass-developed housing areas in Canada, where some realtor buys up all the land and then builds all these look-alike, cookie-cutter houses. So in the end you have perfect square grass yards with the quintessenial red-brick and white panelled windows.

Pleasantville. Definitely. Both places I walked into where all brand new, wood floors, huge flatscreen t.v's, furniture, bedding and more that looked fresh out of a store. But then, they go on and on and on. See, these places are massive. Well, the two I saw were. They have been converted into literaly boarding houses really, as there were between four to six bedrooms, three to four bathrooms and not one, but two small kitchens in one. Plus, one house had a maid and most of the people rooming in these houses were apparently rarely there as they worked down in London or in Cambridge or whatever and basically used the beds and that was that. Iffy. All around. Especially as the one place wanted me to give a photocopy of my passport, drivers license and when I got it, my National Insurance Number. I wonder what sort of tax breaks these people get off all these "renters" then?

Otherwise, most places I have called, I have emailed and I have heard nothing back so I turned to Airbnb which is the wonderful sight I found Julie's place on. I'll do a post on her and my stay here at a later point because staying with someone who actually lives in the place you are visiting, or moving to, has been the most positive thing of this whole wall jamb of stuff.

Anyway, I am going to chat with a lady who has a room in a townhouse she had on Airbnb who could set me up for the months I am here (so long as I just shift my things to other rooms on the couple weeks where she has already had people book in many months prior). Not the most ideal situation, but at least it is a prospect. Perhaps I'll stumble into something even better when I begin to meet teachers when I start teaching next week. Either way, what this, and all the other hassles of moving to a new country has taught me is that you just have to be patient, you have to trust your gut and don't jump into things but don't wait too long either.

Really, it's that pesky balancing act thing again. Can you traverse the wall, like a tight-rope walker? Can you make it from the beginning to the end without shivering with fear in between and falling to a worse end of living a life black and blue with worry?

No. Of course not. All you can do is breath. Make yourself a cup of tea. And cherish the people you have found along your path who are so supportive and understanding. You might find your voice sick of the words "thank you" by the end of it, but really, when you've gone and done what I have, just because I could and I have always wanted to, well, "thank you" is all you need.

Just be grateful. Those walls are just made of brick. They can break as much as an egg could. Therefore, they are no more in your way than a feather on the wind.

What are you grateful for?
Moony.

The Archeology of Luggage

Pretty images. Whimsy and idle. I spy it as the train whips past red brick villages, and fog rolling fields sometimes speckled with horses. Trees line the tracks, leaning, thin and leafy in the manner I know of from Victoria. Even the stations are small; speckled in old benches and overhangs, all brick and stone and wood. The most garish colours come from the train's bright fluorescent lights and plasticky or metal innards and skin. Oh and the mouldy industry buildings sinking rot into the outskirts. Otherwise it is quiet. The hills seem to go on forever.

These iconic buses are regular public transport. Not just tourist buses as I always assumed.

It seems perfect now, but just some hours earlier, after arriving at the station two hours in advance out of fear of getting lost or hung up somewhere, especially with what I carry, an announcement airs, explaining a cancelled train. A tree has fallen over the line and other ways of travel will need to be sorted. I get up around then as it is 20 minutes to for when my own train leaves and I don't see mine up yet, though there is one leaving for Cambridge right then, so I figure I could see if I could catch that one. Oh. Wait. Delayed it suddenly reads. Then, seconds later. Cancelled. Also.

I start worrying as I am catching a train to Cambridge. Yep. All trains to Cambridge are cancelled thanks to a tree falling over the line. But, I can still catch a train out of Kings Cross, according to an information person and along the way back to the Tube I find a group also hurrying to Kings Cross due to the same reasons. They agree to stick with me, except when I get hung up at stairs. My nemesis, mostly due to all the luggage and that pesky thing called weight. I get help, once. But mostly people help once, feel the weight, and then go running. People don't like weighty or difficult things. I can agree. They do add unnecessary stress.

So anyway, somehow I manage my way over, with little help. Twice to be exact, in the end. Those people who proclaimed to stick with me, ditched me at one point, finally, and I find myself running, again, to catch a train to Cambridge, leaving Kings Cross nearly the same time as my original was meant too. No idea how the rest of the journey will fare, especially as out here, among fog and cobbled streets and stairs up and down, will I manage? Well, I do have past experience backing me. I have managed thus far. I will continue to do so. However, it does make me dearly want to have a home base where I can drop things and travel out of. Getting UK citizenship is high on my mind. I wonder if I got a job with the agency, could use them to work toward a citizenship? I would like that. This corner of the world is so much closer to my heart and my center of travel and exploration. All I need now is a base and I can drop the excess and depart. Then again, all these musings could just me be feeling tired, hot and wondering why I couldn't be the sort of person who can travel the world on a backpack?

Especially as there is much to be said about even having excess weight in the first place. Particularly of just shoving it into corners. Well, once I get settled I should take stock of what is most important to me. Clothes? Glasses? Extra bottles of shampoo which will get me by for a month or two? Notebooks with my writing in it? Games? Tablet? PS3? Perhaps. One might say I am totally going overboard with what I brought (particularly on the electronics front) and that a more sensible person would simply purchase everything over here. But then, I already have the things, why buy more? I mean, I will have to purchase many things, a phone, for example, since I thought it might be easier and cheaper than getting my own unlocked and a new SIM card for it. Not so. Not at all. In order to get a phone here, you need one, a bank account (namely, a bank card) and two, a permanent residence that matches your bank information. It's things like that you never bat an eye toward when living in your home country.

Now, well, I am cherishing the bits I have from home. It makes me smile a little every morning to use hygiene products that have labels in French and English and to slip on a one of the many warm sweaters from home, in hopes there might still be a bit of cat fur on them.

If you were moving to a new country for two years, and very potentially moving about even that country itself, what would you bring with you?

Bringing bits everywhere.
Moony

Being Between

So happy lately. So happy. The funny thing about moving to a new country and being stuck in a transient state of not really belonging in the tourist class or the permament resident class is that you start living in the moment and when you don't get your bank information when you were meant to, or you were so busy drolling over a plaque denoting the place where Charles Dickens lived or biking about Hyde Park and drinking ginger beer with a some-level of cousin you never met before, who is actually close to your age even, and you forget to call your agency to see if your online banking codes came through...well, you don't stress.

Instead, you laugh, until you choke, over John Finnemore's epic preview of the next series of the Souvenir Programme and you sneak around side alley's and corner courtyards, snapping random photos at people's pretty flats and then you find yourself walking down a street and you wonder why it feels like you just walked into a t.v. show. Then you see Speedy's Cafe and the door for 221b and then you go in. Permanent grin glued and the local construction workers on tea out front stare at you as you go past with a springy step. Yeah, so what if I am just one in a million femal 20-somethings who is now frequenting your favourite local spot, take it up with the BBC.

It's London. There are people everywhere. I was sitting on a park bench in Russell Square Gardens (yes, that also features in Sherlock) and no other than the slightly creepy Timothy Spall, also known as Peter Pettigrew of Harry Potter fame, walks past with his nose buried in one of the newspapers that get passed around outside all entrances/exits to the Underground.

Being between means you get to try new things but also have to be careful of new things. I've got a giant list of foodstuffs I need to try eventually and already tested a few just out of pure amusement.

Why isn't this in Canada?! We already have almost maple-flavour everything?

I also have a giant list of places to visit, despite doing a walking tour that hit nearly every big spot, plus getting a freew pass into the centre of the text-based media world and also got a free view of the city just as good as the pounds one might spend getting on up the Shard literally next door. The same goes with shops. I tried almost every day to walk into an old bookstore. To no avail. But that's life. Especially when you are in between and find yourself slipping into Westminster Abbey during a service (because that means you can go in for free) and feeling massively out of place because you find much of the sermon a bit silly in the terms of your personal views of the somethings and everythings in the Universe while also feeling like you are drowning in a sea of uncomprehending minisculism. You are one tiny human being under a lot of stone, under a lot of years. At least 500 to be exact. That also means a lot of people. A lot of events. Oh, and watch out when you step on top of Winston Churchill, or John Donne.

It's at this moment when you understand why heroes in adventure stores don't sit down and scream and rant, or cry and run away when they are faced with their entire known world getting turned up like a turnip patch during harvest time. They are not out-of-character. They are more in character than any of us can realise, until we too, are in the same situation.

When you are faced with things so bizarre, so different, or just a general sequence of events which is out of your ordinary to-do, you take it in stride. You do what you have to, just to see the end of the day.
You might not understand why. Or how. Or what the flip is going on. And you are most definitely entirely scared out of your head.

But at least you are out of your head. You aren't dreaming anymore. You are doing something. You are doing many big somethings. You are the hero in your own adventure story.

So, on that note, I entreat you, to stumble out ye olde farme doore (and include lots of "e's" just to throw things off even more) and to stand between the world known and the world unknown.

Take a deep breath, dive in. But don't forget your towel.

Just keep swimming.
Moony.

This Is It

(Pre-service note: This was written right in the moment, you'll find out what moment if you keep reading, but for those of you who have expressed interest in things like my first day in London etc, well, that's coming, I'm just living in the moment and most of this is getting written during down time chilling on park benches for a period).

A last time down at the lake.

This is it folks. I am off. In transit. In motion.

As I sit here in the Kelowna airport. Air-conditioned. Relatively dead. Only myself and one other lady going through security. Yoga music playing. In attempt to calm panicked fliers O cannot help but grin. I would laugh. But my chest is tight and my eyes are leaky. I am overflowing in love from my parents who both took the time to come see me off, have lunch and, some touching last good luck gifts, one of which I am fiddling with in hopes it'll ooze liquid trust. The sort which gets stuck on your fingers like honey and tastes just as sweet to savour. The other rests on my neck and feels both like I have a bit of Gondorian courage crossed with Yggdrasil's sap as a tincture to calm me and ancestors to guide me.

And yet, I sit here, the yoga music tinkling away with waterfall accompaniment, feeling supremely tense and short of breath. I tell myself, what is the worst that could happen? I pay extra fees for baggage that they don't let through, or I get held up briefly as they rummage my carry-on wardrobe to uncover a ps3 and a conversation about how the guard once got embroiled in the Simpsons game with his sons and it was an intense few hours of dueling. I cannot say I have ever player that one, but I can agree gaming can be intense. Particularly ones involving zombies. First person shooter (fps) with zombies is even worse. I don't scream during scary movies. I do  shriek during zombie games. Terrifying. You never know when they will sneak up on you. However, you do know it is a game and you have the option of pausing and turning the lights on.

I won't say life is a game. But right now I can say life is full if fabricated zombies. All those fears we invent as we embark on new and unknown things. Those are our Zombie games. Like games we do have the option of pausing and turning in a light, so we are less afraid. No, it doesn't always work. It doesn't always help my edgey fright when dodging zombies and hiding in corners, surveying the safety of my surroundings.

But. But it does ease the fear a little. So, I sit here now, with my world tree necklace and my rock saying "Trust" and I breath and trying not to snort sarcastically at the airport's attempt to placate us with yoga tunes.

I have my lights on and my game is running. I am off to Vancouver and then London soon after.

This is it folks. Let the zombie hunt begin.

Welcome to life.
Moony.

The Point of You

ARTHUR: Yeah! I love going through the X-ray gate! It’s a bit like a game show, isn’t it? There’s always that moment of ‘Will I make the buzzer go? Will I make the buzzer go?! Yes! I didn’t make the buzzer go!’ Or ‘Ohhh, I made the buzzer go!’
GERRY (laughing happily): All right, then! Well, follow me!
DOUGLAS: I think I might leave you to it and ...
ARTHUR: Oh, come on, Douglas! It’ll be fun! We’ll make a game of it! Like, one of us could put something metal in our pocket and see if the machine can tell which one of us it is!
DOUGLAS: I think the machine can tell that. That is the whole point of the machine.
ARTHUR: Yeah, well, let’s see. There’s lots of things that are the whole point of me that I don’t do.
DOUGLAS: Like what?
ARTHUR: Floss. Don’t tell Mum.

Cabin Pressure Series 4.2 - Uskerty 

I would apologise for the excess of Cabin Pressure references on this blog, except that it was the precise thing which sparked the initial inspiration for this particular post.

After all, isn't the point of everything that every existed, to wonder, what is the point? 

What is the point? 

What is the point to living, to thinking, to eating, to laughing, to crying, to working, to breathing? What is the point of you? 

In other words, what will you leave on the world? With your indeleble Sharpie marker, what will be ingrated into human consciousness because of your existence? 

That is the point of living, thinking, eating, laughing, crying, working, breathing and more. That is the point of you. 

But if I was to sit down with you and have tea, coffee, juice, whatever your drink preference might be, would you be able to tell me what the point of your existence is?

A few years ago I figured, the point of my existence was to create something big, something that would be all over the news. After all, isn't that often what society tells us we should do? We need to end world hunger, win the Nobel Prize, discover a new animal species and stop global warming. 

Ha. Ha. Ha. 

Have fun trying to reach those standards. 

(Note: I say that very sarcastically, one, because those are not the singular and sole points to our existences in this world, and two, because there are people who certainly aim for and achieve those particular objectives of existence and we need people like that). 

No one looks the same. So, no one should have the same standards they must reach. 

Thus, no one has the same point of existence. Plus, returning to to the quote, even if someone has a particular "point" or purpose they could achieve, it does not necessarily they will or they will chose to. 

After all, is it really the end of the world if you don't floss? 

No. Contrary to the popular belief of young children terrified into following the rules and regulations of society, failing to floss will not result in the world going up in flames. 

So to, will the world not end if you don't strive to achieve the societal point of existence that are considered "successful" either. 

No, your success. Your life purpose. The point of you. 

That is your very own, very unique, freckle, or sunspot, or fingernail. It's you. Just you. 

That is the point of you. 

Just keep being. Don't obsess over living up to the standard of flossing all the time. Just do what feels right to you. If "right" means flossing every day, flossing four times a day or five times a week. Great. That's your point. No one elses.

(Note: I am very much using "flossing" as a metaphor for goals and dreams and am in no way wishing to condone either bad dental, or neurotic dental, habits).   

After all, if you do ever happen to pick up an episode of Cabin Pressure, you'll note that Arthur is the epitomy of positivity. Everything and everyone is brilliant to him. And yet, he is also horrible at understanding the most basic of tasks, like microwaving dinners, or picking up van keys and addresses. His point is being the one who will always see the best in every situation and always (generally) believe the best of anyone and everything. 

He'll never win a Nobel Prize and it's amazing he managed to even graduate high school and he apparently doesn't floss. Yet he stands by his unique perspective (whether intentional or not is debatable), and he lives up to his point of existence. We are not metal detector machines in airport security, we have choices, we have control, we have the ability to choose what our point of existence will be. It can follow whatever you desire. 

The point though, your point of existence does not have to follow what anyone else thinks or says. It might, yes, but it does not *have* to. It might even, and probably will, change from day to day, year to year and hour to hour.

So, what is the point of you today?

Currently I am always playing Yellow Car. 
Moony. 

Weather Habits - A Muse Complaining

Currently I am hiding in a dark room, in a house which is thankfully air-conditioned. I am blissfully thankful for this situation as we are living in one of those waves of stupidly hot weather. Read: 35ºC, which is probably up near the 100's for any fahrenheit users.

Either way, the weather is a point of complaint. Easily. 

Marigolds grow bright with regular hose water, feed them that way. Not with your complaining fountain.

 

But wait, just a few weeks back we had rain, glorious, wonderful rain, and more rain. This was also a point of complaint. (Well, for those individuals who aren't ducks like myself).  

The point of the matter is this, there is *always* something to complain about. I'm just a guilty as any, mind you, which is why I figured now would be a good time to write on this topic. Especially seeing as many of my points of complaint are going to be eight hours behind me, literally, when in just a few weeks I embark on my move to England. 

This world. This time. This. Is. It. 

That's all. Those three simple words are so irritatingly perfect but I complained to my mom how boring that would be as a title in a blog post a few weeks back, and here I am now, using it. 

Plus, as a duck, living in the semi-desert climate of the Okanagan Valley, I am literally singing in the rain, when the skies drop upon the earth. Whereas I am surrounded by individuals who are living here generally by choice, or having grown up here, they know nothing different and thereby they all get grumpy when it rains and are happy when it is sunny. (Mostly). 

I have two queries to this: 

1. Why is rain always the scapegoat for mutual complaining in daily human interactions? 


2. Why is complaining such a part of human interaction it is an ingrained and as much an opener to further conversation as "how are you?" happens to be? 

What I come back to on this juncture comes down to an observation that is it simply easier to complain, to whine, to wallow in mutual disatisfaction than it is to run around shrieking with joy, which is primarily the modus operandi of San Diego Comic-Con as I outlined in my last post. 

Where it comes from, I haven't the slightest clue. But then again, I haven't a clue where a question like "how are you?" comes from in terms of things to say to acknowledge an14 other other other person. When really, it isn't doing any acknowledgement of that person because for all we know, they might be feeling absolutely horrible, or maybe they do want to go and dance a jig in the middle of the street, but they won't, because of socially expected norms. Like complaining. 

I recently prompted 14 other people on facebook to a seven day positivity challenge in which they had to post three things every day that were positive, and then they had to recruit two more people each day, to take on the challenge. It's been fantastic because my dashboard has been full of these people, and the people they recruited, all writing about positive things, even on days when, for some of them, some really miserable things just happened to occur. 

Which brings me to my concluding point, that I want to encourage all of you to try out that challenge, or at the least, try to say something positive to someone when you greet them tomorrow. Instead of mutually complaining about how hot it is, or how cold it is, or how bad the traffic was, or how annoying tourists are, or whatever might the mutual point of complaint in your current place of residence, comment on how great the weather has been, or how happy the person looks. 

Yes, you are most likely going to get weird looks or reluctant agreement (especially if you are trying this at your place of work and believe me, most people are not happy at grocery stores because of the money being spent and so mutual positivity is meant with more confusion than otherwise). 

Either way, this life. This. Is. It. Yes, if you are into a whole reincarnation thing, or heaven thing, or whatever your life-after-this-one's belief happens to be, this particular moment, in this particular time and this particular place is never going to happen again. 

So, instead of complaining about the heat, think of how you will feel in the winter, and be happy with now.

Striving toward "sunny duck" status.
Moony.

The Superpowers of Fandom

So, recently a little event known as San Diego International Comic-Con ended with a bang of a lot of swag, tired fans, and brilliant fires of passion on the internet.

In short, it's basically the mecca of fandom and since I missed out on it this year since I am doing a little thing called moving to England in a to weeks, well, that sort of trumps even the largest fan convention in the world. I also wanted to chat about it a little because as I eagerly checked out the youtube recordings of my favourite panels, and eyeballed the reams of pictures of cosplay and every tidbit of new information about upcoming shows and movies, I surprisingly wasn't sad about missing out on that. Instead, I was said about something else.

Come on in! All are welcome!

I was sad about not getting to hang out with the friends I made in past years and the friends I might have made this year or the chats I might have had with authors, artists, actors and other role-models and inspirational persons. 

In short, I was missing the face-to-face relationships this great gather fosters. Not that the internet can't eventually lead to face-to-face relationships, it's just that Comic-con and other such conventions are easy, pre-organized and guarateed places of meeting for fans of all sorts. 

I attended Comic-Con back in 2012 when a good geek friend of mine who really helped to make me openly proud of being one myself, asked if I wanted to go with her. I went because I thought it would be cool, and I am all for experiencing as much as possible. Ironically that sort of gets shot in a corner when I am living at home in Vernon. I expect that is because I grew up here and any exploratory things have long been done or are just not cool because I am around it every day. Recently I realised that made my perspective on the importance of experiencing as many things as possible a bit hypocritical when my mom all but dragged me down to the lake which is situated literally a 5 minute walk down a hill from our home, in the interest of taking pictures for her blog (which mine inspired her to start) as well as my own.

Down the center of Kalamalka Lake, from the edge of the dock. I realised I live in a place people from all over the world visit.

Regardless, I initially went to Comic-Con for the experience of being among a world I had long hidden in my head, long hidden just secretly away on internet browsing and long hidden in general.

In the word of Arthur Shappey of Cabin Pressure fame, since honestly his word is all-encompassingly...heh, brilliant...

San Diego Comic-Con was brilliant. So why?

There were a lot of reasons, the chance to meet your idols and role-models, the chance to show off your creative spirit through cosplay, the chance to get insider information about your fandoms creation and continuation, including celebrating them in general and lastly and most importantly...

You get to meet people just like you.

(And people who are tentative and scared of being casual fans, and people who are full blown otakus, violent debaters against whether the Sindarin or Noldorin elves are better, Star Trek versus Star Wars etc...and people who are so creative you feel inadequate). 

Fem!10th Doctor. Entirely self-made. One of my fav's from 2013.

I have made so many friends over the years, all because of the jumping off point of the same passion for a particular (or multiple) fandoms.

And that, dear readers, is the point and purpose of Comic-con in a nutshell.

It's not about getting into the Sherlock panel, or Doctor Who, or dare I even try The Hobbit or Marvel panels...ha, nor is it about literally running into your favourite actors and actresses at 2am when they are leaving parties or visiting those of us devoted enough to camp out in the Hall H line in hopes of getting into some of the aforesaid popular panels.

It's about huddling under shared blankets and sleeping bags that someone with a car, was able to bring, it is about sneaking into the ritzy hotels to snoop for famous faces and generally feel like secret agents or mauling piles of sushi at 8pm at night after a whole day of forgetting to eat because you were all too busy walking around with jaws dropped and eyes wide, trying to eat everything with everything but the sense of taste. It is about shouting, "hey, Loki! I love your costume!" or "hey, how did you make that awesome steampunk dress?" or, chatting up a small-time graphic artist about their characters and always gorgeous artwork. It's about discovering random treasure hunt games or off-convention gatherings and talks, like Nerd HQ, which don't even require you to have a Comic-con pass.

As per usual, this is a world about relationships and though it has certainly become more mainstream thanks to the internet and Tumblr (yes, Tumblr, as frightening a wormhole pit that is, it is a starting point), it still seems to be misunderstood as a niche full of crazy people who are obsessive consumerists.

Far from it. And yes, like with all areas of life, you will always find the stereotypes exist, otherwise, those stereotypes would not be stereotypes. But on the other hand, there is so much creativity, so much sharing and connection, I feel this brilliant quote by JRR Tolkien, though said with his own works in mind, truly, aptly fits the true purpose behind all of the fandom world:

"I would draw some of the great tales in fullness, and leave many only placed in the scheme, and sketched. The cycles should be linked to a majestic whole, and yet leave scope for other minds and hands, wielding paint and music and drama."
 ― J.R.R. Tolkien, The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien

I have written before about what getting into fandoms did for me, see: Death by Bookshelf Part 2 of 3 and The Connectivity Revolution which go into more personal details so all I will say here is that fandom is what has inspired me to travel, to see different countries, to live in different countries and most of all, to get out into the world, and have lots of experiences I can then bring into my own creative works.

The creativity is the other brilliant side to fandom, it leads people who were once fans of something to create or help create something great and they don't even have to be hugely in the spotlight. Recently one of my favourite sites: theonering.net, published a lengthy interview with Mark Ordesky who was the executive producer on The Lord of the Rings and through reading the interview I discovered he had been a huge D&D fan in his youth. I really should have known. Even people on the business side of fandoms seem to often have been huge fans of the same genres in their youths too. 

You get to learn so many things by being a fan, so here are some of my favourite areas:
Anything off Geek and Sundry, like my favourite mythology vlogger Dael Kingsmill. After all, a large portion of all those backstories, those cultures and worlds that fantasy and sci-fi are based in and upon, that's world mythology for you.

The Piano Guys and Lindsey Stirling are the top two best spots for musical renditions of your favourite fandoms and popular songs, from a mash-up of Vivaldi's "Winter" and Frozen's "Let it Go" to a medley of "Skyrim" music they do also branch out into original music. In short, fandoms opened the door to fantastic talent to get heard.

Then there amazing fan-creations like the Doctor Puppet series, a puppet version of fan-made Doctor Who episodes or Born of Hope, a well-done fan-made movie that follows the story of Arathorn and Gilraen, the parents of Aragorn, many years before the start of The Lord of the Rings.

And to balance the silly out, there are genius people like John Green, who I have mentioned before, who started a vlog just to keep in contact with his brother and now they have a huge organization known as the Nerdfighters which is all about empowering others who are less fortunate through sharing knowledge and wisdom and they are often the forerunners of many volunteering campaigns.

So to leave off my ramble about how powerful fandoms are in terms of creating connections with other people and connecting random ideas into new forms of art and creation in general, here is a short video from the PBS Idea Channel on "The Future of Fandoms."

If so many fans are the minds behind the current fandoms today, what is to say, you, and your ideas won't be the next?

What is to say that JRR Tolkien's vision of many minds contributing to a grand mythology, won't come true? Perhaps it already has? After all, what were ancient myths but the stories told orally from person to person, passed down through generations, each with the signature of the storyteller, tagged on somewhere. Will the fandoms of today become the myths of tomorrow?

Dreaming big and always a fan,
Moony.